These days, webmasters have to invest a considerable amount of time, money and energy in the right optimization tactics to stay in Google’s good graces, including correct SEO writing. If this is your case, good news – we’ve got some useful information for you to share in this blog. The bad news is that you cannot count on a one-size-fits all search engine optimization (SEO) plan allowing you to improve their rankings. Don’t be discouraged though. The good news is that practice does make perfect in this case, without too much blood, sweat and tears.
What Can Hurt Your SEO Writing Rankings
Once you agree to play by the book and ditch black hat SEO tactics in SEO writing and all SEO you do, you can easily avoid some of the most common optimization pitfalls. Here are 10 major mistakes that could hurt your rankings and get your website in serious trouble, forcing you to crack open your piggybank to correct your wrongdoings.
1) Posting Duplicate Content on Your Website. Duplicate SEO writing will never do you any favors. As tempting as it may seem to save some time and money by stealing someone else’s intellectual property, don’t go down this road. Duplicate content is dangerous for a number of reasons:
It exposes you to major penalties from search engines. In case you didn’t know Penguin 2.0, Google’s much-feared algorithm change was rolled out to target duplicate content, identify unethical SEO tactics and remove offending websites.
It disappoints your readers, making them land on your competitors’ websites. Posting duplicate content is like telling your audience how awesome your main rivals are. Your competitors will most likely send you flowers for this. Just take a minute to think about it: what does duplicate content say about you, your company, or your aspirations, vision and purpose in business? Absolutely nothing! This is precisely why instead of copy pasting meaningless, unoriginal web content, webmasters should turn to personalized, compelling, relevant, user-oriented web writing that ensures a flawless user experience and also helps the website rank higher in search engine results.
2) Relying on Keyword Stuffing. Keyword stuffing is so yesterday. None of the competitive players in your niche are doing it anymore, so why would you? Long gone are the days when you could stuff your texts with dozens of keywords and get away with it. At this point, according to Search Engine Journal, first-class, Google-friendly web writing should display a perfect balance between everyday language and keyword usage. So this leads us to a very pressing question: how much is too much, when it comes to keywords? Unfortunately, there is no mathematical formula that you can apply to get a precise answer to this question. The experts at Moz have weighed in to say the keyword density would be a waste of time. Here’s a simple solution for you: read your text aloud: if it doesn’t sound right, then it probably isn’t. If what you are reading makes sense and flows naturally, chances are that Google will also appreciate your optimization efforts. When in doubt, you can always use one of the many keyword density analyzer tools available online to assess the quality of your writing.
3) Posting or Approving Spam Comments. Some business owners prefer to take the easy way out when it comes to implementing on-page and off-page optimization tactics. The road to SEO writing hell is often paved with good intentions and ignorance. Those who pay third-parties a certain amount of money to spam different websites by posting comments accompanied by a link to their webpage seldom attain their end goal. This technique is very annoying and less effective than you may be inclined to think.
It will inevitably affect your brand, making you seem desperate. We all have to start somewhere, but do you really think that multimillion dollar companies managed to reach their target by posting spam comments on other people’s websites? If the recipe for success would be so simple and so transparent, everybody would be following it to get rich and famous overnight. Unfortunately, this is not how it works. Also, according to Entrepreneur, you have to be very careful when it comes to approving comments posted on your website or blog. Keep only the ones that provide real value to your customers and ditch the rest. This is the safest method to protect your image, discourage spammy SEO writing practices employed by others and show the uttermost respect for your readers. If you want to safeguard your website from spam comments that may compromise your reputation, just follow Google’s set of guidelines.
4) Investing in Irrelevant, Low-Quality Content. Google strives to ensure a more than satisfactory navigation experience for all Internet users. This means that it values high-quality content and compels webmasters to improve web writing that doesn’t meet its standards. If you’re willing to cut corners when it comes to crafting new content, you may want to reconsider, since Google is not the biggest fan of quality compromises. Before writing a new blog post or on-site content, make sure you:
Have an in-depth knowledge of the topic that you plan to expand on
Conduct a keyword analysis to discover the most popular queries around which you will build your content
Are familiar with the particularities of your niche, business and audience and can actually respond to your visitors’ needs and demands.
5) Not Investing in Content (At All!). Sometimes,lack of drive can be much more dangerous than a misguided action. The history of your company is not going to write itself. If you can agree upon this fact, then you can also reach the conclusion that lack of content won’t say too much about who you really are and where you’re heading. Your visitors are craving for premium, informative, problem-solving content; so what exactly are you doing at this point to address their needs and demands? Well-focused, reader-oriented content gives your audience a good reason to listen to what you have to say and answer to your unique calls-to-action.
These days, it is not enough to have a killer website to attract potential buyers. You have to go the extra mile to spread the word about your fantastic new-arrivals, new giveaway or discount campaign. In this case, you will need a blog and a constant presence on some of the most important social media platforms. No matter what channels you plan to use to broadcast your message, you should always keep in mind that content is a powerful bridge between you and your segment of public. By refusing to post content or update the existing one regularly, you basically burn your bridges behind you, allowing your competitors to celebrate your early, self-inflicted failure.
6) Buying Links. This isanother wrong call that can easily put your rankings on the line. Naturally, some deep-pocketed company owners may tend to think that buying links is easier than earning them. The truth is that their plan to use paid links can and will make Google angry, since it represents an attempt to trick the ranking system set in place by search engines and manipulate it to their own advantage. Fiverr is only one of the websites that many people access to buy hundreds of links that point back to their website. Why? The answer is simple: it’s cheap (the whole deal will only cost you about 5 dollars) and easy. Naturally, the “side-effects” are not advertised. Google won’t hesitate to de-index your website once it realizes that you rely on this shady tactic to make a name for yourself and boost your rankings. This means that your website will no longer appear in search engine results and that your counterproductive optimization tactic will burn holes in your pockets in the long run. At this point, the $5 offer probably doesn’t seem as attractive as you considered it at first.
7) Thinking That You Can Never Have Too Many Anchor Text Links. Here’sa general rule that you should keep in mind: in terms of optimization, good things can become very bad overnight if you abuse them. Placing hundreds of anchor texts with specific keywords in your on-page and off-page content would be like using 10 spoons of sugar to sweeten your cup of coffee. Sometimes, less is more. Overloading on overly optimized anchor text links used to be one of the most common shady optimization tactics used by webmasters to improve rankings. At this point, your plot to deceive search engines, based on the usage of such anchor text links will definitely backfire on you, making you lose more than you were planning to win.
8) Using Sneaky Redirects, Hidden Links or Hidden Text. If you think that you’re a magician who can make links or text fragments disappear to attain your illegitimate optimization goals by violating Google’s Webmaster Guidelines, we’ve got news for you: the joke’s on you. Throughout time, many webmasters have tried to mask text and links by:
Posting white text on an all-white background
Posting a text fragment behind an image
Choosing to set their font size to 0
Linking only a very small character (a hyphen, a dot or a comma) to make the link seem less visible
Sneaky redirects simply deceive Google, Yahoo and Bing by letting the users check out content that is different from the one made available to web crawlers. As usual, Google is constantly one step ahead of those who plan to violate its guidelines. All these black hat tactics trigger penalties, so you should avoid them at all costs and focus your entire attention on 5-star content creation correlated with 100% legitimate optimization techniques.
9) Not Working Hard to Improve Your Social Media Presence. Do you know where yourprospects are spending their spare time? They may not be waiting for you just around the corner, dyeing to swipe their cards and get their hands on your products, but you can still reach them on some of the biggest social media platforms, with good SEO writing. You can start a conversation with someone during your lunch break, by simply asking him or her to pass you the salt. This mechanism can be adapted to online environments, as long as you learn how to recreate the feel of natural interactions.
This means that you have to maintain a solid online reputation and a constant presence on social media websites. According to Search Engine Journal, social media channels are becoming increasingly important in the eyes of search engine websites. This is another great reason why you should take your time to create and post fresh content on social networking websites. This simple action will open the doors to amazing, cost-effective marketing opportunities and help you bond with your prospects faster and easier than ever before.
According to Search Engine Watch, those who choose to ignore social signals make a huge mistake. Unfortunately, according to the same source, not many business owners understand and succeed in exploring the full potential of social sharing buttons, which bring their content and ultimately their brand in front of a larger audience.
10) Thinking and Acting like SEO Is a One-Time Thing. A personalized SEO plan is not your one-way ticket to fortune and fame. If you are accustomed to “do this” for a short period of time to “get that”, now would be a good time to revise your approach. The truth is that SEO encompasses many phases and involves the creation and implementation of a solid, comprehensive execution plan, endless tweaks, SEO writing, constant monitoring, result measurement and interpretation and potential corrections.
SEO experts never sleep on the job, and they’re always on duty. They are constantly working to optimize websites and correct misguided actions from the past. If you want to simplify your mission, keep in mind that outdated SEO tricks and tips that enable you to cut corners have nothing to do with good marketing decisions and will never help you improve your rankings. As long as you know and love your brand, creating and distributing first-class content shouldn’t be a challenge. On the contrary, content creation should represent the secret ace up your sleeve allowing you to tell the whole world who you are and who you plan to become.
So, Express Writers has been around now for three years. This blog, by the CEO (Julia), takes a look at our crazy journey. I hope you’ll be inspired; I think you’ll be amused; if anything, it will be a fun read. I promise. And if you’re here reading our celebratory blog today, there’s probably a 95% chance you helped in our success somehow, from giving our CEO a handshake to buying our content or writing it. And since you’re probably a little bit invested (or a lot), it’s worth a read.
Express Writers was launched mid-May of 2011; the launch was not funded, invested or marketed by a third party; total costs to launch were kept under $170; and the single person responsible was myself, a 20-year-old female who dropped out of college to leave a nursing degree and pursue her passion, copywriting.
Who Is Julia?
In 2011, our founding date, I was a typical broke college student, working overtime at McDonalds, a job I’d started in 2005; pulling all-nighters, working 10 hour shifts at a time. I was also a full-time college student studying nursing (RN), piling up more than 12 credit classes per semester, going through summer. In the middle of all that, I wasn’t happy. I didn’t like my restaurant shift; I was discovering in school that nursing, my golden “hope and dream” as a child, was not for me.
Naturally, I was an inspired young person, with a natural talent in computers and writing. In a pastor’s family, and taught to be quiet in public, I loved to come up with ideas on my own and implement them. How did the change from what I was doing to what I love doing happen? I simply woke up one day and asked myself, “What does Julia love to do the most?” And I was inspired and motivated to find the answer—not just think about it. I knew the answer when I looked back. My passion was writing.
To understand my passion, you’ll need a glimpse at home-schooled, four-eyed, 8-year-old me. I had started writing a novel that was 200 pages when it was completed by the time I was 12 (with a subsequent trilogy in the works). It was a medieval fiction tale about a knight, incorporating my love of the post-Dark-Ages and a lot of research I had done about that era. Instead of playing in the yard every summer afternoon, I was in the house drumming my ideas out on our Windows ‘95 computer when I was 11 years old. I dreamed, ate, slept that story. I created it; I loved my characters; sometimes I was too caught up in it. To get some outside expertise on my writing, I was involved at Writing.com, an awesome online community where writers can sign up and publish their own portfolio, feature their writing online, start networking and meeting fellow writers. (I would recommend this resource primarily for fiction and peer networking: you can’t earn anything from it.) I had an established account there and was getting book reviews for sample chapters, talking to people who were three times my age. They were reading my book samples and loving it. At least 10 people said they would buy it as soon as I published it. When the book was completed after countless stages of re-reading and revisions with my family and adult friends of my family, I started mailing copies out. I sent my book in to at least 20 writing contests, only to be rejected by all. (One sent a lovely letter saying their entire staff read the book and loved it, but I needed to be a little older than 12.) I lined up a publisher after researching over 100 of them: I was going to use Lulu.com, a self-publisher. I wanted to do this myself. (I had a really hands-on type of entrepreneur-mindset from that age.)
The big morning comes—I woke up to work on last touches, my dad and mom are there in the room and they’re talking about my publishing goals. I insert my 3 ½ floppy, where my book was stored, in the drive: those horrible beep sounds erupt from the evil Windows 95 machine like a mad cow on steroids…and I read an error message that states, Floppy drive has failed. Reformat? Reformatting meant wiping the drive. My dad jumped to the computer; we both tried to work on every idea to recover the drive contents—but alas. It had failed. The book was gone.
Fast-forward a little. To be accredited in homeschooling in Pennsylvania, homeschoolers had to take huge, long tests every 5th, 8th, and 12th grade. They included SAT and ACT content, and it took about 7 hours to sit down and get through them. I scored past-college grades on every English test, in each grade level, from reading comprehension to creative writing. I loved doing these tests. They weren’t a test; they were fun. When I took my entrance tests for college, I scored out of every single English class requirement except the mandatory one.
Year 2005. When I was 14, I started two companies, a local cleaning services company and a computer repair company, employing myself. I walked door-to-door on summer days to market them. I did better with the computer repair company; I knew how to troubleshoot computers and fix just about any minor issue, from network issues to programs not installing. (Minor stuff.) With the computer repair company, I earned about $5,000 my first year, driving to local’s houses and fixing their computers. I only got one gig with the cleaning company before I decided to drop it. (I wasn’t the best cleaner in the world.) I also started working at McDonalds after I got a permit for underage workers (that little blue card).
Year 2007. I was 16. I learned HTML code myself; I helped build my dad’s website; I was a moderator on several forums; and I started getting into paid surveys online, found a way to make money out of them (you had to signup without getting scammed), and earned over $300 a month that way. I did mystery shopping and all those types of gigs. I looked into MLM and pyramid schemes and didn’t like them too much. I connected with lots of encouraging entrepreneurs who gave me so much advice and hope through the jobs’ online forums. When I was 17, I started nursing and was almost full time at McDonalds; I got drowned in nursing and McDonalds, and subsequently gave up other things that my parents told me were “distractors” that year.
How I Started Express Writers
By the time I was 19, I knew two things: I loved to be an entrepreneur and create things that were 100% my idea… and I wanted to work on an idea till it was happening and real and succeeding, not just a dream. It was something I couldn’t get out of my heart. My big dream was to do this and succeed—with a six-figure salary. Yes, I had hopes that were bigger than the town I grew up in. Secondly, I personally loved to write and was very good at it. I hadn’t connected the two things (entrepreneurship and writing) yet.
The Nitty-Gritty, Car Mechanic Type of Labor Where Express Writers Was Born… 2011 was the year I taught myself copywriting. The writing that you can sell and people can use for their SEO optimized websites, not just writing for fun. I dug deep in the online freelancing world in late 2010, getting up at 4:30 am to do this. This real world was rough. I didn’t know much at all when I dove straight into it. When I started getting work, I had no local clients, and no one even hired me as retainer; my “clientele” came and went. They wanted a resume, and nothing else; 50 articles, and nothing else; 1 press release, and nothing else. It was a fighting war to find jobs those first months. There were so many nights I went to bed not sure if I was going to get paid the next morning. I really tasted failure time and time again—I got so many rejections—but always, always, things pulled through to be hopeful enough for me to continue (sometimes, barely). I thank God for that today. There were weeks when I was writing 50 articles per day. Yes, you read that right, not a typo—50. I started getting carpal tunnel down my fingers and wrists from that. The worst part was that in these early days I thought $1.25 per article was a lot of money. I probably started writing my first “freelance articles” getting paid around .50c/pay per original article. (Yes, horrifying…but remember, it was pretty much how I learned to copy write. Today I don’t even grudge those employers their rip-off schemes. At least I learned my trade that way. And I heard it all—“here’s a .25c raise coming your way! We are the best employer you’ll ever get!” among other lies.) But finally, by February 2011, I was earning enough to pay my parents’ rent charges, gas to school, and cell phone bills monthly. In March 2011, I quit McDonalds.
I might as well add this in! Here’s a brief guide that I wish I had at the start of how to get started as an online writer (note, this opportunity is a flourishing one). Skip to “A Failure Brought About Express Writers“ if you’re not the online writing type (it’s ok, you can be our client).
First, teach yourself something about online copywriting. Don’t apply to a first position without studying up a bit. Copyblogger offers a lot of great resources that are a good start (look under Articles and Ebooks—I would recommend trying to read all their e-books, which are fairly short and sweet).
Sites like Craigslist.org (look for your local town, then go to Gigs > Writing), Problogger.net, Indeed.com (look under writing/copywriting as a job keyword), and LinkedIn Jobs (look for keywords like writing, copywriting) are the top places to look for jobs. I found 90% of my writing jobs on Craigslist my first year. Just watch out for the people who are paying “pro bono” (meaning not at all). (Two tips you won’t read anywhere else. Problogger often lists unique jobs for specific skills you might be a PERFECT fit for: like a gaming writer 50 or older, or a young female fashion writer. Jobs that list characteristics like these WON’T hire anyone else. LinkedIn tends to have the BIG names (GE, Kohl’s, etc.) who are looking to hire individual freelancers, not agencies—you have a good foot in the door if you’re one copywriter with a polished LinkedIN resume.)
Get hired by an agency, like mine (Express Writers). An agency position could be a long-term career or just a foot in the door. You’ll get to work alongside people who can give you advice when you need it, and sometimes will offer resources and training.
A Failure Brought About Express Writers. A failure made Express Writers happen. Here’s how. Late March 2011, things were picking up for me with freelancing. I grew a small reputation for being one of the few on-time, American, excellent-quality, and reliable writers available on the freelance work platforms. People started referring me to others. I was handling college and my freelance work, which was slowly becoming a disaster, because my writing clientele was growing and growing. I was really overwhelmed trying to handle both nursing and writing, trying to wrap up writing jobs, handle new ones, and study and pass all my tests for nursing. By mid-2011, my second nursing semester was coming to an end. It abruptly ended by my clinical instructor bringing me in her office the last day and telling me I had failed my clinical class and the semester. I had not a single “unsafe” and no specific reasons to have failed; she simply told me she could tell my heart wasn’t involved. She said when I talked about my company on lunch breaks; I had so much passion and excitement. Why don’t I consider focusing on that? That was really hard to hear that day. I had a 1-year period to retake the semester and keep my place without having to restart everything again from first semester. After going home, crying my eyes out, listening to my dad tell me I failed my studies, failed because I had deserted my calling, and more, I wiped my eyes dry…and considered what to do. There was no question really in my heart—I wanted to pursue my company, drop every other work calling, and mold and build that beautiful little thing to success. This was a strong, heartfelt passion. My clinical instructor was right.
The First Year (2011). The name Express Writers was coined on oDesk in about 10 minutes, early May of 2011. Why did I create it? I really wish I had a more inspired idea to tell you. I’m ashamed to say, it was a short-term idea. I simply woke up one day to way too many orders in my email inbox. Slammed with work, I needed help. There were writers like me struggling out there; I could hire them, build an agency of excellent writers, and make a small profit. I created an “oDesk company profile”; and Express Writers made its first debut online appearance. I put the name in Edwardian script and turned that into an official logo. (To me, that was the most beautiful font in the world. Don’t laugh—at least it wasn’t Papyrus!)
May 2011 was a big month. I failed nursing, and launched my business. Remember how I said I kept my launch costs under $170? I had found a developer in the Philippines who charged me $80 to theme and code my website, this one:
I bought my first website domain for around $7; hosting, my first month, for about $3; my fictitious name from the Feds for $75; a professional photograph of myself for free from my sister, this one:
…and then sat down for three 12-hour stints at the computer to write all my website copy and finish coding it to completion, before launching it May 25-26, 2011.
I let my small subscriber list of clients know my company had launched, and started marketing my website—through my own writing, of course. I set goals to work on rankings; I targeted long tail keywords and wrote at least 3 blogs and 3 E-zine articles a week to market it; along with writing 50% of my clientele orders myself, outsourcing the other 50% to my baby team of no more than 8-10 people the first year. There was some writing I thoroughly enjoyed, including blogging for Hyundai and GM dealers where I researched and wrote about new car models weekly. I can still tell you all about the Hyundai Genesis. Besides, I needed to write it myself to pay the most of my bills, I couldn’t survive on $2-3 profit per article for 20 articles a week.
Hiring…And Firing. April and May, I tested the waters. I learned how to hire “contractors” and researched things like registered as a sole proprietorship and getting a fictitious name. When I started looking for and then hired my very first team member, Aimee, I had no idea she’d still be with us to this very day. (She writes technical and marketing content, and is featured on our About page.) This doesn’t mean hiring my other writers was easy. I had writers who were furious with me for not paying them top dollar, threatening to sue or report (which dumbfounded me); writers who caused me the loss of some of my best clients, because they didn’t deliver when they said they would; all in all, about 100 fires for my first 10 solid hires.
But these were the months I decided I wanted to focus on a business in this wonderful industry of copywriting. Going the route of hiring people and beginning a company, instead of pursuing individual freelancing, seemed like the best long-term option for me. One day I knew I would get honest-to-God tired of writing so many articles a day, I thought. (I still write for our Express Writers blogs, and probably won’t want to ever give that up.) I wanted to work a lot less while employing an amazing array of writers and being able to connect them with great clients. One criteria: the writers had to be at least as good as me, if not better.
2011-2014: A Fast Road on Full Throttle. Things progressed rapidly. I marketed with very little money, posting Craigslist ads, and using all the freelance work platforms (Elance, oDesk, Freelancer) to scour for hundreds of jobs daily and apply to them all. I had a goal of sending about 200 emails daily, posting about 5-10 Craigslist ads, and applying to about 50 jobs. Craigslist ads, believe it or not, brought me about 60% of my clientele the first year. This was the full-color Craigslist ad I created for my postings, using Photoshop and simple text:
My first big client was Enigma Software, who needed monthly technical articles. (I found them on Amazon…long story.) My second biggest clients included a tax attorney firm and a marketing department in California. In 2012, I managed everything myself and worked on growing my company (easily putting in over 60 hours a week), employing not more than 20-30 writers.
My first staff hires were not until 2013. In February 2013, I hired my first full-time single manager for the team, Tamila. She put in 40 hours a week and when I realized that one person was just not enough, I let her go and hired two Coordinators in April 2013, sisters Annie and Alecs. I found them on Elance, and they had been my writers (very much in-demand, talented writers) for a month before they reached out and asked if I was hiring staff. That was God aligning things, because I found out they had just been let go from their full time job with a bigger agency than mine (which gave them the perfect experience for my company). They are still with us today, full-time, and not a single day goes by but I feel grateful for them, their work ethic, reliability, and heartfelt involvement. I hired our first Staff Editor in April of 2013; and since then, we’ve hired about five Staff Editors. Our current Client & Sales Coordinator, Sarah, was hired in November 2013.
A little stats on these “fast years”: In 2012, I doubled 2011’s overall income, output and efforts, while managing everything on my own with about 20-30 employed writers. In August 2012, I met my husband and COO Josh McCoy, when he hired me to write his website content on oDesk. (We were married January the next year!) In 2013, I (once again) doubled the previous year’s record; hired my first staff; and employed 30 writers. In 2013, it was a triple output; and we were employing over 50 writers and 5 staff. And in late 2013, I made a big move and “fired myself” from all freelance platforms, hiring a full time sales representative to cold call our target clientele, SEO and digital agencies as a marketing replacement. It was a scary move for me, since freelance platforms accounted for at least 25% of Express Writers’ clientele and income. However, I had come to discover that freelance platforms (Elance, oDesk, Freelancer being the tops—and now one company is merging to own all of them) are quite honestly a pitfall of cheap, bad, and poor quality employers, as well as terrible freelance support on the part of the platforms themselves. Since leaving these poor quality workforce areas, I am blessed to report we had the best month we’ve ever had, this February 2014.
That’s the story, in a nutshell. Well—not so much a nutshell. (Sorry about that.) And if I’ve left you wondering a little how I got from 2011 to today in terms of client growth…it’s just been a steady journey of both finding clients and hiring and firing team members. I’ve video-Skyped with managers in Europe with the Bank of Austria, whose content we are still on retainer writing; I’ve had the opportunity to interview brilliant industry minds; worked with Wal-Mart and Johnson & Johnson, and decided to fire the latter because they didn’t pay and took a month to review 50 words; and had the pleasure to work alongside some amazing people, who far surpassed my hiring criteria of “at least as good quality as myself”. (That stupefies me regularly still: How did 23-year-old me become the employer of much older, much talented and creative persons? And I love that I can hand out a work-from-home, awesome opportunity to these greatly deserving recipients.)
What’s Ahead. Today, our team has created over 10,000 pages; 5,000 projects; served worldwide clients; and we have over 60 expert writers and editors employed. We celebrate a third year in an industry that has expanded out of proportions we expected: today is quite the day of content marketing. The value of content is ever increasing. Writing exceptional content that is shareable, readable, and creative is what content marketing means today – and there’s no question about a need for talent in the writing industry, when you look at that criteria.
This year, we have big things on the works…our Content Shop, neck-deep in custom development, content services continually being refined, team training, and a brand expansion and re-launch with the launch of our Content Shop. We hope to sell even more premium level quality as we re-launch. We’ve had quite some development curveballs with the custom build platform for the Content Shop, which means more time necessary before we launch it – but it will happen (that’s a promise)! Last but not least, I am expecting my first baby with hubby any day now—if she arrives this week, it will be just that much more icing on the cake! Here’s to another great year ahead!
Today, one of the biggest investments for your online marketing is content. Just how big? Check out this interesting formula on how to calculate how many “questions” you could possibly “answer” with content for your niche audience.
Take the example of a typical business content marketing flow and need. Let’s say you sell dog food. Some possible content marketing for that simple, down-to-earth industry would include newsletters, blogs, print brochures for your local clientele, and possibly an infographic or two if you want to be trendy with your content.
Now let’s take a look at the content need for just one of those avenues. Since blogging is one of the best ways to rank with Google (confirmed by SocialMediaExaminer experts) and long and frequent blogs are better, you’ll need at least 3 topic ideas per week. Getting those topics can be easy, if you know from which bucket to pull ideas. For example, what do your clients often ask you when they call in? If it focuses on grooming, come up with countless topics based on toenail grooming instructions, hair grooming, and then God only knows how many breeds you can come up with for different grooming instructions, from Pomeranians to Labradors.
How to Keep Up With Your Content Demands
Your content demands are going to be simple, but they sure can overwhelm you quickly. We are going to take some time to go through various ideas to keep up with the demands.
1. Make Your Content Available Everywhere. There is no greater letdown then trying to access the company’s website on your smartphone and realize it is only available in desktop mode. Another letdown is that a website may have a mobile platform but when you load it on your tablet, it is terrible. A great example of this is Instagram. You can only view the app on your tablet in mobile mode, but it is the size of a phone screen. If you resize it, everything is blurry and ugly looking. It makes using Instagram on a tablet difficult.
It might be silly, but that frustration is real and it can make someone ignore your site. Make sure your site content is available in different formats from desktop mode to mobile to tablet. By doing this, you will limit the amount of complaints you get each month, lessening the overwhelming feeling that your content strategy is way too big to manage.
2. Have A Focused Campaign. If your campaign is all over the map, you will definitely feel overwhelmed with your content, B2BMarketingInsider.com writes. You’ll feel like it is impossible to keep up with and this can cause you to burn out and not reach a wide audience. Keeping with the dog food motif, make one campaign solely based on keeping your pet healthy with natural foods, run some blogs during that campaign that deal with why it is important to feed certain foods to certain dogs. You can even break it down into breed or age specificity. For the next campaign, talk about how food can help a dog’s coat and write a blog with various grooming tips. This helps you stay focused and sends a clear message to your customers.
3. Utilize Different Formats and Repurpose. You don’t have to keep using one format. More formats equal more viewers and will help generate more buzz for your product. We listed some of these great formats above such as blogging, infographics, newsletters, and brochures. We think you should give them a shot! Now, you are probably wondering if you need to craft all sorts of new content for these different formats, the good news is you don’t. You can repurpose the content you’ve already written and use it in multiple formats. Quicksprout offers a really handy guide to do just that and this will definitely ease your content demand woes.
4. Make Accessible Goals For Your Content. A major reason your content demands are becoming overwhelming is because you have set some unattainable goals. Sure, your goals might be what you want in the future but right now, you’re going to have to give yourself time. Start by making smaller, more accessible content goals and grow your goals along with your company and how much content your clients are expecting. The demands won’t be as overwhelming for you by starting out small and slowly growing.
5. Work With Everyone, No Matter His or Her Language. Are you getting comments in French, Spanish, or Russian? Well, those comments probably aren’t spam like many people think and thankfully most browsers (i.e. Google Chrome) offer the ability to translate on the spot. Utilize those available translations and see what people are writing. This could be a very good indication that your product is starting to go global. Now, don’t let this overwhelm you! There are many tools out there that can help and you can start working on a strategy for global content writing.
First off, start by using a translating tool to respond. Always make sure the person knows you don’t know their language when using a translation program. This will help you engage with your customers, no matter what. Secondly, if you are getting more comments and views from overseas, start considering the steps to write for a global market.
6. Dedicate A Staff Member For Content Purposes. If content planning and strategy are becoming way too overwhelming for you to maintain, consider hiring someone solely for content. This can be either someone who is an outside source or someone who works within your company. You will still have a say in the matter, but let them do the ultimate crafting to keep the pressure off of you. This will be a great way to ensure you have quality content all the time.
Stick To These and Everything Will Be Fine
By following these 6 tips, you will find that you aren’t as overwhelmed with your content demand as when you started. These tips will help relieve a lot of unnecessary stress and will help keep your content top notch. Take a deep breath, implement these into your next content strategy and feel the unwanted stress of meeting demands disappear! This is perfect for crafting that awesome content you’ve always dreamed of.
Just think about it: having an excellent content strategy is like having money in the bank. There’s at least one good reason why you should always plan ahead when it comes to crafting content: it’s easier to reach your destination when you know where you’re heading. Truth be told, at this point your prospects can be influenced to respond to your calls-to-action through a plentitude of marketing channels. But the question is this: do you promote and distribute your web writing randomly or is your content strategy as elaborated as a well-played game of chess?
3 DangerousPitfalls of Content Strategizing
A cohesive, personalized, long-term content strategy can help you become an extremely competitive player in your industry over a short period of time, leading to:
Improved conversion rates
Increased brand visibility
A solid community and a bigger client database built around your brand
Superior organic search rankings
Reinforced social following
However, these improvements can’t be witnessed overnight and require sustained efforts on your part. To stay on the right path to content strategizing success, you have to be able to spot and avoid the most common pitfalls associated with this process.
3 of the Worst Mistakes You Could Make Instead of a Great Content Strategy
1. Putting the responsibility on somebody else’s shoulders. (Half-heartedly tossing a list of keywords at your secretary and having her come up with a few blogs for the week, for example. Is this you? Don’t feel too bad…we have some helpful steps for you below.)
2. Thinking that your product, brand or industry is boring. There are no boring products; there are only boring marketers. Every item available for sale has a value, a price and a well-defined market. Your job as a marketer or content creator is to put its unique features and benefits on full display and make it look insanely attractive in the eyes of all potential buyers.
3. Acting like what you write and how you write about your company won’t affect your online reputation and your bottom line. In a world in which online interactions are your most powerful ally when it comes to getting and staying on the same page with your audience, what you write helps your readers determine who you are and why they should (or shouldn’t) do business with you.
10 Ways to Guide Your Content Strategy
1) Evaluate Your Unique Marketing Techniques and Unique Business Objectives. Before getting to work, make sure you know what you’re trying to achieve and how you plan to accomplish your mission. This may seem like a no-brainer, but it’s not. Many content creators, strategists and marketers get stuck at some point simply because they don’t know which business goals they are supposed to follow. So ask yourself this: why are you investing time, money and energy in a content strategy in the first place? Do you want to rank higher in search engine results, boost customer loyalty or increase conversion rates?
All these objectives are different and require different courses of action. Instead of opting for an overarching goal that doesn’t say a lot about who you are and who you plan to become, it would be better to come up with a list of smaller, manageable ones.
For instance, if you run a small-scale auto shop ensuring affordable repairs and you also sell used cars, you will try to attract 2 different segments of prospects: those who wish to get their car fixed and those who are interested in buying a used vehicle from a local dealership. In this case, you will most likely try to grab the attention of local clients by promoting your inexpensive, high-quality repair services, while spreading the word about your decently-priced line of used cars. Based on these small goals, you can elaborate your own content strategy and make wiser decisions.
2) Understand Your Audience. According to Search Engine Watch, it is extremely important to build your content marketing strategy based on the particular interests of your targeted audience. We all get it: your end goal is to improve sales and increase brand awareness but to do so, first you need to build credibility and trust. Keyword research and social media listening tools are two valuable elements that you can rely on to find out what makes your segment of public tick.
3) Understand Your Industry. If youwant to win big you have to become familiar with the rules of the game. Find the most accurate answers to the following questions:
What motivates your prospects make online purchases?
Who are the most powerful influencers in your industry?
Is your audience service-oriented (and eager to spend more on premium packages) or price-focused (and always determined to pinch pennies)?
Are you out-shined by an influent competitor that is currently dominating the entire industry? (If the answer is yes, it wouldn’t hurt to take a closer look at its community, web content and social media presence).
What type of content is received with more enthusiasm in your niche?
Are there any gaps in the content creation strategies displayed by your competitors, which you may be able to fill?
Would you be able to create and maintain solid relationships with industry experts and influencers?
4) Find the Perfect Distribution Channels. How exactly do you plan to reach your audience while distributing your first-class content? According to The Guardian, the mix of media channels that you select to broadcast your message is extremely important. You should evaluate the strengths, drawbacks and costs associated with every single channel before making a final call.
5) Use Surveys and Rely on Real Customer Input. Do you want to know how your digital content, blog or website is performing? Are you really ready to assess the quality and effectiveness of your web writing? If so, explore the unmatched power of surveys, accessible online or included within a certain publication. Surveys are the 21st century oracles that will tell you what you need to know about your current content strategy and the best course of action that you may want to embrace.
Furthermore, note that big brands do everything in their power to guarantee a memorable experience for all their buyers every single step of the way: from the “I’m just looking” phase to checkout and doorstep delivery.
For excellent results, follow in their footsteps and listen to what your clients have to say long after they hit your “buy now” button. How would they rate your content? Did the product match its description? Sometimes, the most brilliant ideas allowing you to take your content strategy to the next level come straight from your buyers.
Since they get to test your product, they are the ones who could point to flaws, features and benefits that you would have never thought about. Therefore, you should keep in mind that a good strategist is always a good listener. Pay attention to new directions indicated by clients and find the best way to include real customer input in your content pieces. There’s one more aspect that you should take into consideration: credible testimonials are a great way to build trust and attract new potential buyers.
6) When in Doubt, Just Ask! Even the most experienced strategists get stuck at some point. If you don’t know how to resonate with your audience and how to guide your content strategy in a new direction, don’t hesitate to ask the right questions. At the end of the day, your curiosity will be rewarded. Ask your visitors:
What do they enjoy reading the most?
What are the topics that they would like you to expand on more often?
What kind of content are they interested in finding on your website or blog? Do they prefer text-based content, videos, infographics or a combination of all these elements?
By simplyasking a few basic questions, you show that you care and that you are looking forward to improving your content strategy based on the specific needs, demands and expectations of your targeted audience.
7) Look for Awesome Opportunities in Your Own Backyard. Before setting extremelyambitious goals and targeting new playgrounds, make sure you explore all the tempting opportunities that may be hiding in your backyard. Analyze your existing audience and find out if you could deliver more value to your customers.
After all, you can enjoy pancakes without that delicious maple syrup, but what would be the point to do so? In this case, value represents the sweet syrup that prospects wish to taste when they choose to buy your product or do business with you. A feature blog would enable you to inform, educate and entertain your prospects and give them another reason to land on your website, purchase your merchandise, subscribe to your newsletter or spread the word about your brand or your new line of products.
8) Create a Useful Editorial Calendar (and Stick to It). One thing’s certain: content planning should not involve any guesswork. Unfortunately, in some cases, this is easier said than done. To prioritize your goals, stay relevant and come up with first-class content pieces designed to attract clients like a magnet and improve your bottom line, you have to stay organized at all times. According to HubSpot, when it comes to guiding your content strategy, you have to map your web writing to the buying cycle and elaborate an editorial calendar.
In this case, the key is to set up and follow very strict weekly (or monthly) benchmarks, indicating who your public really is and what it wants from you, what kind of topics you should expand on, the best ways to share your content, what type of formatting you should use and so on. Never forget that practice makes perfect; creating and following a strict timeframe will give you the chance to put your thoughts in order, avoid distractions and strategize in a much more effective manner.
Ideally, you should be able to take a small step back every 3, 6 or 12 months, harvest the fruits of your labor, evaluate the end results of your content strategy and optimize the aspects requiring urgent improvements. Before you start working on your content pieces, first make sure that you can count on a large audience that is interested in what you have to say and is willing to share your web writing. This is the moment when you start reading what your competitors are writing, while keeping an eye on social media to spot excellent engagement opportunities. According to Moz, by investing in long-term relationships with influencers and powerful players in your industry you will manage to get the bigger picture and upgrade your current content strategy fast and painlessly, without breaking the bank to make it happen.
9) Give the Green Light to the First Batch of Fresh Web Content. Ultimately, you will guide your content strategy based on a trial-and-error process. Even though you’ve done your fair share of keyword research and have used every SEO tool in the box to perfect your web writing, only time will tell how your readers will rate your content. Before launching the final version of your content piece, you have to make sure that it actually:
addresses the real needs and concerns of your readers
provides value and presents certain topics from a different perspective
helps you reposition yourself as an industry leader
reflects the vision, mission and purpose in business of your company and is accompanied by a number of extras ( illustrations, photography, charts, infographics, videos and so on), which enable your audience to filter and assimilate your message much more effectively
10) Measure Your Results. After a certain period of time, you have to go back to your old content pieces and measure their effectiveness. By assessing your own website and reviewing past campaigns you can find out what types of content make your prospects rub their hands in anticipation and which ones make them yawn. You can use various tools to measure your success and improve your interactions with your readers. For example, Google Analytics allows you to reengage with your potential buyers by interpreting their particular set of on-site actions.
All in all, a clear understanding of your industry, audience and your own business goals will help you make the best decisions when it comes to creating and implementing a successful strategy. Keep in mind that no industry or product is truly boring. The key is to identify and reach your own segment of public and build interesting, informative content based on a solid plan. As long as your content is shared and enjoyed by a large audience, you are ready to strategize for success in the long run.
The English language is, quite possibly, one of the strangest languages out there.
Contradicting rules, incredibly unique words, and confusing idioms are just a few reasons why.
Do you suffer from abibliophobia?
Do you bloviate and carry a bumbershoot with you while you lollygag?
Let’s find out in today’s blog that explores some of the craziest words in our living language.
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34 of the Zaniest, Craziest Words in the Dictionary (Anything Missing? Add It In the Comments!)
Shakespeare is known for creating some “crazy” words, but most of those words are now so common that we don’t notice. These words range from “hurry” to “zany” and in the 1400s they were quite strange.
Today, we are going to delve into some of the craziest words, many of which have been around about as long as some of Shakespeare’s “gibberish” and some from the early 1940s and 1950s. Some of these words are used regularly in many places around the English-speaking world, whereas other places haven’t even heard of them.
Let’s see which of these craziest words you already know and which ones are new to you:
1. Bumfuzzle. This is a simple term that refers to being confused, perplexed, or flustered or to cause confusion. You’ve probably heard your grandma or grandpa use this phrase, especially if they are from the East Coast or below the Mason-Dixon Line. This word is derived from the Old English dumfoozle.
2. Cattywampus. This is a term that you will find in the Midland and Southern United States. It is referring to something that is in disarray, that is askew, or something that isn’t directly across from something. For example, a post office might be cattywampus from the library. You might actually know this word by the terms catty-corner, kitty-corner, or catawampus.
3. Gardyloo. This is actually a Scottish term, but it sounds really nifty! The definition is a funny and gross one; this is what people living in Edinburgh shouted out their windows as a warning before dumping their slop buckets out of their windows. At least they gave a little bit of a warning to those below!
4. Taradiddle. This word references someone or something that is filled with pretentious nonsense or something that is a lie. A great example of this is that classic fisherman’s tale of how big the fish he caught was. Usually the fisherman is lying or at least exaggerating about the fish, especially if he (or she) didn’t keep the fish.
5. Snickersnee. While this word sounds like something funny or possibly cute, it is actually referring to a long, dangerous knife. It was first used in reference to cut-and-thrust fighting in the 1700s and is still occasionally used when referencing the knife, though it is becoming more and more obsolete.
6. Widdershins. This is another way to say something is moving counter-clockwise or something is moving in the wrong direction. It is a much more fun way to say counter-clockwise and is most likely something you heard one of your grandparents or great-grandparents say. Many people do still use it in many poems and newly published books.
7. Collywobbles. This refers to a weird feeling in your stomach or an overall bellyache. It is derived from the Latin phrase cholera morbus, meaning it came from the disease we all know as cholera. This is a word many people still use especially older individuals, and the background is quite dark! Many don’t realize the dark background much like many being unaware of the origins of “Ring around the Rosie.”
8. Gubbins. This is an object that has little or no value and is also referring to a gadget or device. It can also refer to odds and ends or rubbish and, oddly enough, can be used to describe a silly person. We don’t know about you, but it seems a little strange that a word describing something with little to no value also refers to someone who is silly.
9. Abibliophobia. Now this is a word that perfectly describes many people and you may be one! This refers to someone who is afraid of running out of things to read. We’re guessing that you are probably going to start using this word to describe yourself as you head out the door to the nearest Barnes and Noble or local bookshop.
10. Bumbershoot. Here is a fun word that most people know. This is referring to an umbrella and is something we have heard in many a Disney film or in many different books. It is quite fun to grab your umbrella and say in a fun voice, “I think I need my bumbershoot today!”
11. Lollygag. The origin of this word is unknown, but it first surfaced around 1868. The definition of “lollygag” is someone who is messing around or wasting time. It also refers to someone who is doing something that isn’t serious or useful. This could be a good word to use when procrastinating, “I’m just lollygagging.” Are you a lollygagger?
12. Flibbertigibbet. This is another fun word! This refers to someone who is silly and who talks incessantly. The first known usage of this word is the 15th century and used to be spelled flepergebet. This word also refers to a person who is flighty.
13. Malarkey. This refers to words that are insincere and talk that is particularly foolish. This is a word that we can thank the 1920s and 19030s for and it is still used by many people. It is a fun word to say, as well.
14. Pandiculation. This is what happens when you wake up in the morning and stretch. As you stretch, your muscles might go rigid for a short time, which can sometimes be uncomfortable. It also describes that wonderful, or terrible, combination of being extremely sleepy, stretching and yawning at the same time. Now, when this happens to you, you’ll know what to call it!
15. Sialoquent. Do you remember being the eager student in high school or college who sat on the front row? Do you remember how much the professor spit while talking? Well, this is what that action is called. This is such an eloquent word for such an uncomfortable front row sensation.
16. Wabbit. No, this isn’t referring to a wascally wabbit. It is a Scottish term for being exhausted. Next time you’re tired, try saying, “I’m pretty wabbit at the moment” and see just how many people look at you strange.
17. Snollygoster. This is something many people already call many politicians, but it happens to be a nicer sounding term. This refers to a politician who does or says things for their own personal advancement instead of following their own principles. Try saying this in your next political discussion and see people’s reaction.
18. Erinaceous. This is a strange one; it refers to something or someone who resembles a hedgehog. If someone ever says that you are looking quite erinaceous today, you know now to give them a penetrating, evil glare.
19. Bibble. You know those people in your favorite restaurant who drink and/or eat noisily? What they are doing is referred to as bibble.
20. Impignorate. How about using this word when you want to say that you’re pawning something? It is a much fancier term and quite a fun one at that. This phrase doesn’t only mean to pawn but also to mortgage something.
21. Nudiustertian. Have you ever wished that you had a word for the day before yesterday? This is that word! It might be a little bit more convoluted to say, but it sure is an interesting sounding word. This word is sure to confuse, and eventually astound, people. Now that you know this word, try teaching it to your friends!
22. Quire. You can always say “two dozen sheets of paper” or you can say “quire.” It means the same thing! Interesting, huh? There are quite a few single words for many phrases.
23. Ratoon. Don’t worry, this isn’t referring to a raccoon and rat mix breed or an ROUS (rodents of unusual size), it is, in fact, referring to that small shoot or growth that comes from the root of a plant. You will see a lot of these in the spring and summer as things are growing.
24. Yarborough. This refers to when you are playing a game of cards and the dealer deals a hand without any numbers above nine. This can really be unfortunate or great, depending on which game you are playing.
25. Xertz. You’re outside in the summer heat moving heavy furniture or other items, making you super thirsty. As soon as you’re able, you grab a tall glass of water, lemonade, or iced tea and gulp it down quickly and/or greedily, helping to quench your thirst and cool yourself down. When you do this, it is called xertz. This also refers to eating food quickly and/or greedily.
26. Zoanthropy. This is an interesting term! It refers to a person who has delusions that they are a form of animal or that they have changed into an animal.
27. Pauciloquent. If you are a person of few words, then this is the term for you. It refers to someone who doesn’t say much or who, when giving a speech, gives a very short one. This is a great way for you to tell people you are a person of few words, without having to say that whole long statement. Give this a try next time and see what happens.
28. Bloviate. This is the opposite of pauciloquent and refers to people who talk for a long period of time or who inflate their story to make themselves sound better. This also refers to someone whose words are empty and have no meaning.
29. Borborygm. You know that rumbling you sometimes get in your stomach? Well, this is one term for that sensation! It might be a little bit more difficult to say than saying, “I’m hungry,” though.
30. Brouhaha. This is a word we are sure many people have heard and it is still used a lot today. This refers to an uproar or big event. We guess you could say the latest sports team to win at something sure did cause a brouhaha!
31. Absquatulate. This refers to yourself or someone else leaving suddenly. It can also mean that someone has absconded with something, as well. It is more a form of slang, but it isn’t something you hear every day!
32. Comeuppance. This is definitely a word you probably heard your grandparents use at some point and it is used in many films set in the 1920s to the 1950s or 60s. This is a fun word and it should be used more than it is. It means that someone will get what they deserve or will “get their just deserts.”
33. Donnybrook. This is a fun little word for an uprising, a melee, or a riot. It can also refer to an argument. If you search Google for this particular term, you will not only find the definition but also learn that it is a place called Donnybrook, which is part of Dublin, Ireland. Very interesting!
34. Nincompoop. This is another word that we are sure you have heard at some point and you probably know the definition. This refers to someone who is silly, foolish, or just downright stupid. It was used regularly in the 1950s and 60s but is still quite a fun word to say!
In the End…
Isn’t the English language unique and interesting?
Many of these words are still in use but are used in different parts all across America. We have different terms and phrases for different things and it is pretty awesome to learn more about our language. It is also fun to learn how much it differs between Missouri and New York or California and Texas.
In 2011, our founding date, I was a typical broke college student, working overtime at McDonalds, a job I’d started in 2005; pulling all-nighters, working 10 hour shifts at a time. I was also a full-time college student studying nursing (RN), piling up more than 12 credit classes per semester, going through summer. In the middle of all that, I wasn’t happy. I didn’t like my restaurant shift; I was discovering in school that nursing, my golden “hope and dream” as a child, was not for me.
